Harry Potter Lessons Learned, Chapter 4: The Keeper of the Keys

I have an issue with how my favorite professor, Rubeus Hagrid, is portrayed. And I think I'm meant to. Throughout the book, we hear about him being "too big to be allowed" and a "sort of savage." Sure, he's got a temper, but he's also the oversized wizard whose heart broke so hard in 1981 that he howled like a wounded dog. I'll have a lot to say about him once we get to the last chapter of this book but let's look at the lesson for today first.

An Unexpected Party

One of the most striking things about Hagrid in his first proper chapter is that he is a bull in a china shop who can't stop making amends. He smashes the door in, but then repairs it. He expects tea out of the people he's just terrified, but then makes his own tea and goes a step further in addressing the lack of proper food. I do bristle at the number of times he fat-shames Dudley, but Neville Longbottom is the only chubby character who gets a heroic storyline and I can't spend the entire time objecting to this. He sees a child whose needs have been ignored and fixes that first.

It's not just the food. It's the intention. I don't want to cast too many aspersions on people I know, but I was born the day before Thanksgiving and I had a lot of pumpkin pies for my birthday over the years. Thing is, I don't like the taste or smell of pumpkin pie. But my uncle came to visit one year and brought me a lemon meringue pie for my birthday. More recently, a friend brought a brownie 2000 miles from my favorite bistro near her house to my new place in Massachusetts. Hagrid and his "might have sat on it" birthday cake remind me of my uncle and that is high praise. It is also an introduction to the fact that Hagrid's beetle eyes see more than people imagine.

We're never told if the neighbors on Privet Drive suspect that Harry is mistreated. We know they judge him as peculiar, but it's Harry's story to tell and we only hear specific mention of peculiar Mrs. Figg and her cats. Hagrid admits to being somewhat clueless as to why he hasn't been responding to his Hogwarts letters, but he reads the room with brutal clarity and stands on Harry's side more than any other person we've been introduced to. Of course someone who politely refit the door into its frame would fix the problem of a loaded gun by tying it into a knot, but he also makes sure that no one silences Harry or prevents him from understanding the world better.

This isn't the place to talk about authorial intent, so I'm not going to wonder if J.K. Rowling was writing censorship into this book, On the other hand, it amuses me that people have a variety of reasons for trying to ban this book. I've heard that it encourages kids to practice witchcraft and sets deviants up as role models. One of my favorite examples was when people put up posters that quoted a source about devil-worship and the source was the satire site The Onion.

Hagrid sets himself apart and is the perfect representative of a benevolent wizarding world because he adamantly educates Harry. He solves the mystery of the letters from no one, the complete strangers who treat Harry with respect, the source of Harry's powers, the cause of Harry's scar, and the circumstances of James and Lily's deaths. He is a hero of breaking the silence and the first of many such characters that we look forward to meeting. He's also the means by which the "call to adventure" in the Hero's Journey finally gets issued and accepted. And, best of all, he proves that courage,, aided by a pink umbrella, can be immensely powerful.

The lesson: Speak up We need to hear you.

If there is one takeaway that I wish people would find in this series, it's that we are made better by sharing our experiences. I'm not just being literal and feeling relief that Harry can't seem to go into danger without someone else finding themself on a similar quest.

Sharing what we know and who we are helps us articulate what we need and how we can help and we don't know who needs to hear those things at any given moment.